Visual Merchandising and Store Design | VMSD.com

Macy’s rebuilt a damaged mall store in Warwick, R.I., with an eye toward a new national design strategy – including, perhaps, its Herald Square overhaul

By Steve Kaufman

In March 2010, two days of heavy rains caused the Pawtuxet River to overflow in Warwick, R.I., leaving the Warwick Mall with 7 feet of standing water and $80 million in damages.

After a cleanup and review of losses, the mall itself and several of its tenants – such as Target, Old Navy and Longhorn Steakhouse – took the opportunity to reopen with new and improved store designs.

For Macy’s, the anchor tenant, it involved almost a total, year-long renovation.

“There was little that could be salvaged,” says James Bellante, Macy’s senior vp of visual merchandising presentation. “We had to strip the whole store down to its studs, removing columns and interior walls, entirely replacing the floors.”

But getting rid of all that architecture became an opportunity not only to renovate this store but also to test some new strategic concepts for rolling out across the Macy’s nation.

“Our overall goal has been to open up our main floors with better sightlines and traffic patterns,” says Bellante, “and to expand and emphasize some of our key departments around a center core.”

Warwick is a one-level mall and the 186,000-square-foot Macy’s store has a larger-than-usual main floor. So the challenge became organizing and redefining that area, to drive eyes and feet to the brands and departments Macy’s wants to emphasize, calling attention to those merchandise categories with adjacencies, signage and visual merchandising.

Blocky interior walls were replaced by slab walls that define the center core but are broken up with decorative see-through screens. Aisles have been widened and ambient lighting levels have jumped way up.

One of the major new Macy’s initiatives is Impulse Beauty, roughly 1000 square feet of cosmetics and new niche skin-care lines in a combination of open-sell and Macy’s traditional assisted cosmetics counters. Gondolas organize the brands alphabetically around the perimeter of the department with assistance still available from “beauty advisers.”

In the expanded and upgraded shoe department, large fixtures and oversized tables offer a heftier presentation with a more modern aesthetic. Sofas instead of the usual fitting chairs add to the elegance. Other expanded departments include ready-to-wear, dresses, suits and men’s furnishings.